Deck Tech: Explosive Vegetation

Aaron Forsythe

By now you've heard plenty about the giant monsters. You've seen how eight-mana spells have dominated the environment, and how one gigantic Legend or another seems to be lurking around every corner. Well, whether it's Dragons or Angels or Elemental Legends doing the beating, each of these decks has one strategy at its core: get to six mana as fast as possible. And one card is central to that strategy: Explosive Vegetation.

Vegetation, or "Veggies" as it's being called here, is the key card in what looks to be a diverse selection of mana acceleration cards. With the ability to go from 4 to 6 land is nice, the added ability of fixing colors is what makes it so amazing. Let's look at four relevant decks.

Mana Fixers: 4 Veggies, 4 Krosan Tusker. Wise didn't make the Top 8, but he did finish in the Top 16 and is playing the same deck Kai Budde chose to use. The deck has double mana spells in three colors and tops out with the eight-mana Biorhythm. The extra land can also be put to use by Kamahl, Fist of Krosa. After sideboarding, the deck can go to four colors to support Chromeshell Crab.

Mana Fixers: 4 Veggies, 4 Wirewood Elf Jensen's deck ditches the Tuskers for Wirewood Elves. With only two colors, the "tutoring" of the Tusker isn't really needed, and the Elf allows for some truly crazy openings. Imagine turn-2 Elf, turn-3 Veggies, turn-4 Silvos or Exalted Angel. With so many decks running Silvos, the games can often be decided by who gets his in play first, and Jensen's deck seems to have the most consistently fast way of doing so.

Mana Fixers: 4 Veggies, 4 Krosan Tusker Kashima's deck shows what kind of nutty mana you can get away with if you play the right fixers. It's possible for Kashima to draw opening hands that contain WWW, GGG, and BB cost cards. But with all the fixers, fetchlands, and Grand Coliseums, anything is possible—Kashima's record attests to that.

Mana Fixers: 4 Veggies, 4 Krosan Tusker, 4 Wirewood Elves, 4 Goblin Clearcutters Darwin goes for the full package of 16 mana fixing/accelerating cards. And his deck needs it. With eight 7-mana Dragons as the base of his attack force, he can't afford to fall behind on land. Of course, his deck has the biggest potential payout: a 17/17 flyer that taps to deal 12 damage is certainly worth all the trouble it takes to play.